Starred posts | chat.stackexchange.com

Anonymous

Oct 6, 2014 05:03

litreactor.com/essays/chuck-palahniuk/…

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Anonymous

Oct 1, 2014 20:20

A non-traditional label is "identifiability", used in place of "definiteness"

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Anonymous

Oct 1, 2014 09:48

►

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StoneyB

Sep 28, 2014 17:55

Be brilliant! Take no prisoners!

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Anonymous

Sep 23, 2014 19:38

> Gotta make a move to a town that's right for me
> Town to keep me movin' keep me groovin' with some energy
> Well I talk about it talk about it talk about it talk about it
> Talk about talk about talk about movin'!

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Anonymous

Sep 21, 2014 13:16

I've gotten grumpy in the past when people on ELU closed questions because they were about taboo vocabulary

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Anonymous

Sep 14, 2014 21:50

I'll admit I'm mentally filtering out every question with "Mark Shepherd" in the title

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HostileFork

Sep 11, 2014 10:21

Are legal texts fitting for "English Language Learners"? :-/

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Anonymous

Sep 6, 2014 07:42

Rule number one: Be Nice

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Anonymous

Sep 5, 2014 15:23

web.mit.edu/~flemming/www/paper/rosasroses.pdf

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Jolenealaska

Aug 27, 2014 22:48

Hard to believe! But true! "Dude, did your parents have any children that lived?"

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Anonymous

Aug 24, 2014 17:40

If we're going to use silly plurals, can't we at least be pedantic about it and use the right silly plural? :-)

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F.E.

Aug 14, 2014 07:30

> 18.46 The there of existential sentences differs from there as an introductory adverb in lacking stress, in carrying none of the locative meaning of the place-adjunct there, and in behaving in most ways like the subject of the clause, doubtless reflecting the structural dislocation from the basic clause types: . . .

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StoneyB

Aug 3, 2014 16:48

Unless you're an actor. The most difficult word in the English language to speak gracefully is "error".

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Anonymous

Jul 30, 2014 16:05

> I.2.d. With subord. clause. To allow, concede, grant (either from conviction, or for the sake of argument). ¶In these senses admit is sometimes followed by of.

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oerkelens

Jul 29, 2014 20:15

@DamkerngT. The web, including google and wikipedia, are very, very useful - when combined with common sense. The problem is that even though red cars are red and good dictionaries are good, common sense is not that common.

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Anonymous

Jul 29, 2014 15:50

> A robot specializing in language acquisition and other robotic matters. Recently upgraded, now capable of whirling. clank clank BEEP whirrr clank

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Anonymous

Jul 27, 2014 23:47

That reminds me again that you should either read or see The Princess Bride, or preferably, both!

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Damkerng T.

Jul 23, 2014 10:20

But... but... I like pictures.

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Anonymous

Jul 22, 2014 14:38

Of course, I can speak me some English good without knowing about that stuff.

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Anonymous

Jul 12, 2014 17:59

But if you're judging books by whether or not they make good doorstops, both books qualify

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StoneyB

Jul 12, 2014 17:48

@snailboat The only 'modern' grammar I have is Bas Aarts' Oxford Modern English Grammar, which doesn't address the matter at all. I'm gonna go play around on Google Ngrams and see if there's anything interesting there.

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Anonymous

Jun 6, 2014 18:36

I think most linguists prefer nonstandard to substandard because the latter has a connotation of inferiority (as in substandard workmanship), with sub- meaning "beneath", whereas non- just means "not" with no judgment implied

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Anonymous

Jun 6, 2014 00:08

That is why in duration phrases are +telic, but for duration phrases are -telic

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Anonymous

Jun 6, 2014 00:03

So! *John ate an apple (+telic) for 10 minutes (-telic)

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Anonymous

Jun 6, 2014 00:01

In duration phrases force an accomplishment interpretation (+telic), while for duration phrases force an activity interpretation (-telic)

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F.E.

Jun 4, 2014 19:01

"Then, when it ended and I finally could get my family back, it came at a price, like suddenly being blind."
But I like to read, and so, instead, I walked away. They got to keep my family, and I got to be able to continue to watch TV and movies and read books. Being able to see is important for a tiger. Tigers don't need family, for a tiger is a solitary hunter.

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Jasper Loy

Jun 2, 2014 21:27

I saw the earlier conversation. I think answers, no matter how short, should be answers. Comments, no matter how long, should be comments.

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Anonymous

May 29, 2014 22:12

Repeating what you hear as soon as you hear it, or if you can, while you're hearing it. (This last requires repetition, of course!)

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Anonymous

May 28, 2014 15:47

No natural language is "logical"

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Anonymous

May 27, 2014 17:30

But then, I don't always understand stuff.

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Anonymous

May 24, 2014 13:25

Hah! Context, silly.

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Parth Kohli

May 22, 2014 21:05

Right when I was about to jump off the Empire State Building, my physics teacher popped up and cried, "Don't do it! You have so much potential!"

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Damkerng T.

May 21, 2014 12:12

I think ELL is different from other programming sites.

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Anonymous

May 17, 2014 21:24

Huddleston & Pullum use the term "syntactically inert" for a phrase which is still seems like a phrase, but doesn't really permit variation

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Anonymous

May 13, 2014 17:44

It's true that there's no dialect that is universally perceived as standard across the world. It's usually more useful to refer to a construct as standard or non-standard, and one construct may be standard in e.g. British English and non-standard in American English. "Standard English", then, is shorthand for the dialect which contains the features that are standard in the relevant context, so a British speaker likely speaks a different Standard English than an American speaker does. Therefore, kiamlaluno is correct that there "isn't a Standard English", but there are many Standard Englishes. — snailplane Mar 2 '13 at 1:10

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Anonymous

May 12, 2014 16:11

As for sounds corresponding to IPA, these are more reliable than Wikipedia's recordings: web.uvic.ca/ling/resources/ipa/charts/IPAlab/IPAlab.htm

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Anonymous

Apr 27, 2014 13:25

Hard to spell words, part one: hemorrhage

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Anonymous

Apr 12, 2014 17:16

Some references for this stuff: McCawley in chapter 13, CGEL in chapter 12, Quirk et al. in chapter 17 (under noun phrases for some reason)

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StoneyB

Apr 12, 2014 17:00

Once you get into complicated idioms and template expressions like Wh-x S, you pretty much have to junk the notion of word class and start thinking in terms of function, syntactic role. It's sorta like in music discarding the notion of the pitch of a note and thinking in terms of its harmonic role - a G in the key of C is a fifth or a dominant.

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StoneyB

Apr 12, 2014 16:50

Hi, guys ... I think we dealt with this matter of why and how heading free relative clauses somewhere on ELL. It doesn't really matter what word class you assign it to, it behaves just like other Wh- terms there. I seem to remember suggesting it acts as a pro-adverb.

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Anonymous

Apr 12, 2014 09:39

@ZhanlongZheng Your options for expressing uncertainty include: (no modal) > must > will > would > should > may > might

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Anonymous

Apr 3, 2014 05:02

The examplesˢ [ ~~that~~ peopleˢ [ ~~that~~ Iˢ knowᵖ ] actually useᵖ ] work fineᵖ

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Damkerng T.

Mar 31, 2014 12:02

gutenberg.org/files/37134/37134-h/37134-h.htm

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Ice Girl

Mar 15, 2014 13:30

Thank you my best friend

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Parth Kohli

Mar 15, 2014 06:56

Six years...

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Anonymous

Mar 15, 2014 00:12

"The police paid me a visit today. Wanted to know if I murdered that poor sop Hendrik! Well, I told them to check their damned records, 'cause I was locked up in county jail when it all went down!"

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Jolenealaska

Mar 14, 2014 15:37

I hope that the ELL room will always be a safe and welcoming place for people from all over the world.

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Jolenealaska

Mar 8, 2014 06:46

As an Alaskan, I can relate to being startled by how quickly night comes in early winter.

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skullpatrol

Feb 24, 2014 07:55

remember to use a dictionary

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